Why shouldn't the U.S. be able to attract and keep India's and China's top talent -- that small fraction of a percent of their huge populations? Some of those people will start or certainly help grow companies here. The U.S. should be able to showcase hard-to-fill educational and business opportunities, then choose from the world's best candidates to fill them. I want to be absolutely clear that "best" does not mean "cheapest." I'm talking about welcoming rare individuals at the near-genious level who should also have the charisma to manage (if needed) competent American and multicultural teams. What's unnaceptable is the swapping out of average-talent Americans for average-talent foreigners based on the foreigner's low cost or his/her fear of deportation.

Yes, expanding H1-B visas increases profits for the 1%, who OWN the corporations that will save on labor costs.

Expanding H1-B visas increases unemployment for the American tech workers displaced by the cheap foreign labor.

The Democrats stand united with the Republicans in their commitment to more profits for the 1%. The Democrats feel that we have to accept their economic treason against American workers because the Republicans are worse.

I'm concerned about the vicious cycle effect of H1-B visas. Corporations will choose to fill H1-B visas because the the visa holder is typically cheaper, and the employee is captive if he/she chooses to pursue a green card. This "captivity" naturally puts a downward pressure on salaries for technology positions. The increased pool of employees also puts a downward pressure on salaries. The result is the U.S. is graduating fewer and fewer engineering, comp sci, and physics students as these fields of studies are more demanding with less long-term reward. The consequence is an increasing the demand for H1-B visas. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Tim didn't ask me if that was an OK position. It isn't OK and we need to create an environment where more college students want to go into IT. It has to be all about American jobs! This administration is either protecting American jobs or it's outsourcing jobs, Tim you can't have it both ways.

That's a stretch and wishful thinking to interpret Geithner's generic comments as implying more visas will be available. Even if there were more H1Bs, what makes India think they'd get them? There are now lower cost sources of educated labor in other countries.

Well, not all they earnings from H1Bs are siphoned off. After all, they work here and have to live here. Sure, they are unlikely to make big ticket purchases aside from a car, but as far as general day to day expenses are concerned they are not much different than any other resident. I also wonder why you restrict it to American citizens. I work in the US for over 10 years now and I am not a citizen.It is incredibly difficult to get reliable and unbiased information as to how much tech talent is available, but I suspect that there is enough. The problem with H1Bs is that the fee is ridiculously low. If a company needs talent in order to stay in business or grow business then the visa fees need to reflect that it is indeed a hardship. So based on size and revenue of a company the fees need to be increased drastically. It needs to be preferable to hire without visa, even if that means paying relocation and sign-on bonus.

Can anyone tell me how many H1B visas are currently in existence at the moment? All of the information I have seen so far only talks about the number of visas granted per year (85,000). Since very little of the salaries paid to these workers actually stays in the US, this represents a fairly large fiscal "leak" for the US.

Assuming that the visas are only good for 6 years (510,000 active visas at any given time) and the workers are being paid on the average of $50,000 (take home of $25,000), this represents about a $12 Billion drain every year. If these funds were going into the pockets of American citizens instead, it would certainly help the US economy.

And, as for the employers who claim that the talent is not available in the US, sorry, we do have it. In the 30 years I was hiring tech workers in the semiconductor industry, I was never able to find a worker who could immediately be fully productive walking in the door. I always assumed that some "finishing school" was going to be necessary to get a new worker accustomed to the way we did business. It worked and we never had a problem finding and attracting new workers.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.